Meet the Shard Climber, who refuses to give up his passion despite knowing it could kill him
GEorge King is usually a very happy young man. “I want to live in old age,” he says Independent. “I love my life.”
But when he likes his favorite hobby, he knows that his chances of killing him is a real chance.
26-year-old London’s Shard-Western Europe’s tallest building, London’s traffic, stopping the audience and led to a media frenzy, which led to a daring free climbing in 2019 hit the headlines in 2019. Although he was finally imprisoned on the stunt, he represented the realization of a dream for several years in the production.
King remembers that I was about 10 years old when I climbed a climbing wall without rope. “I remember doing half and freezing. But after composing myself and focusing on my breath, I reached the summit and felt something that I have never felt before – like an overwhelming euphorus, a sense of happiness, almost supernatural feeling.”
At that moment, there would be a launch ramp for an obsession of urban free climbing, a discipline that left very little space for error.
At the age of 13, King had already put the landscapes on the scenery. Orum I remember seeing a school bus on a trip to London. He stood apart from all other buildings … As if he was taken from the future and put in the present time.
“Impulsively, I wrote to my dream list. Dream 202: Broken climb.”
After finishing school, King completely devoted himself to this goal. He received education for months and sacrificed his social life and family time. “It was my whole being, or he says.
He even designed detailed methods to measure the surfaces of the building without doubt. “I didn’t just get a measuring tape and I couldn’t start to measure, otherwise it would be suspicious. So I would run to the piece in the sports gear.
Finally, when the day came, the king climbed in July 2019 without drones, cameras or sponsors. “This was not about to fulfill a dream, not with fame or money, or he says.
The climbing took only 20 minutes. For balance, he moved continuously for the first 100 meters to avoid losing acceleration using the corners of the window panels. At some point, he locked his eyes with a glass cleaner. “The cleaner smiled at me.
The police were waiting at the top. They greeted him with a handshake and released him after 30 minutes – a sign, king’s thought, implicit admiration. However, the legal reality was very different. He was later sentenced to six months in prison in Pentonville, one of the most challenging prisons in London.
King says, “He certainly met his reputation,” he says. “The knives were on a daily basis, serious self -harm seizures, even suicide. It was a really terrible place.”
Despite the risks, King says that the rituals of their climbs – including accepting their own deaths the night before – says that they aim. “It gives me a sense of salvation, a sense of freedom. The meaning of what I do and the emotions it gives to me are worth the risk. My mind is slightly different from other people.
Nevertheless, King insists that he has no desire to death. “I want to live. I want to be around for the people in my life. But I have to accept the possibility of death to have this control.”
The message emphasizes, not imitation, but about passion. “If you just come and try what I am doing without appropriate preparation or training, you will probably die, or he says. “But once you find your passion, anyway, block the whole universe and be completely full of tunnels.”
